A medical device can be implanted in a body to perform one or more tasks including monitoring, detecting, or sensing physiological information in or otherwise associated with the body, diagnosing a physiological condition or disease, treating or providing a therapy for a physiological condition or disease, or restoring or otherwise altering the function of an organ or a tissue. Examples of an implantable medical device can include a cardiac rhythm management device, such as a pacemaker, a cardiac resynchronization therapy device, a cardioverter or defibrillator, a neurological stimulator, a neuromuscular stimulator, or a drug delivery system, among others.
Cardiac rhythm or function management devices can be configured to sense cardiac activity, deliver pacing pulses to evoke responsive heart contractions, or deliver a shock to interrupt certain arrhythmias. In certain examples, one or more of these functions can help improve a patient's cardiac rhythm, such as including improving cardiac output of blood to help meet a patient's metabolic need for such cardiac output. In other examples, cardiac function or other physiological patient variables can be monitored, such as to provide an indication of a worsening or improving cardiac disease status. In some examples, a pacing rate can be adapted in accordance with metabolic rate or demand.
Many variables can indirectly reflect a body's metabolic rate, including body temperature, ventilation rate, minute ventilation, or cardiac output. Minute ventilation, for example, varies almost linearly with aerobic oxygen consumption during exercise, and it is a commonly-used variable in rate-adaptive pacemakers to reflect the exertion level of the patient. Cardiac output, a key indicator of cardiac function, is a function of heart rate and cardiac stroke volume, or the volume of blood that can be pumped from one ventricle during a cardiac cycle. Other, more indirect indications of metabolic rate can include a body physical activity level, such as can be measured using an accelerometer. Physical activity is correlated with metabolic demand because such activity requires energy expenditure and oxygen consumption.
Information about a stroke volume can provide an indication of a patient cardiac status. For example, in a heart failure patient, a decrease in stroke volume over several days can indicate an increased risk for a decompensation episode. Various methods of trending heart failure have been proposed, including using thoracic impedance information. For example, Blomqvist et al., in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2010/0016915, entitled “MEDICAL DEVICE AND SYSTEM FOR DETERMINING A HEMODYNAMIC PARAMETER USING INTRACARDIAC IMPEDANCE,” refers to using hemodynamic status information in the extreme point sections of an impedance morphology curve. Some methods can be adapted to individual patients. Valzania et al., in Vol. 32, December, 2009, of Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology, entitled “MULTIPLE VECTOR IMPEDANCE MEASUREMENTS DURING BIVENTRICULAR PACING: FEASIBLITY AND POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS FOR HEMODYNAMIC MONITORING” refers to using multiple impedance signals to monitor hemodynamic variables in heart failure patients, and monitoring heart function using relative, intra-individual variations in intracardiac impedance.
Stroke volume can indicate other cardiac conditions. For example, low stroke volume can indicate a tachyarrhythmia. Increased stroke volume, such as over several weeks or months, can indicate beneficial cardiac remodeling. Stroke volume can also indicate a need for therapy. For example, the PRECEPT pacemaker, designed by Guidant/Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc. and under clinical investigation from 1989-1992, used relative stroke volume information derived from intracardiac impedance measurements to control pacing rate.
Stroke volume can be determined using a variety of methods, including indirect methods. For example, systolic time intervals can be used to indicate a surrogate for stroke volume. Systolic time intervals, such as PEP or LVET, can be inferred from the timings of peaks in the first derivative of a thoracic impedance waveform, dZ/dt. In another example, systolic time intervals can be inferred from timings of S1 and S2 heart sounds. Some methods used to predict and trend cardiac stroke volume use implanted electrodes in a known, fixed geometry. Some of these methods use single predictors, such as a change in peak-to-peak amplitude in a right ventricular intracardiac impedance, to monitor stroke volume.